4 ms·

My view is that because the private organizations that undermine the public good are centralized, the public ones need to be as well, if only for self defence.

by badsock 11y ago

My view is that because the private organizations that undermine the public good are centralized, the public ones need to be as well, if only for self defence. My read of history is that decentralized structures are more productive and better for their constituents, but are weak against external attack. Also, the left is generally a fan of basic income, which isn't along the "to live is to toil" line of thinking. And as a final a side note, in Canada it's perfectly legal to make your own currency (e.g. Calgary Dollars), but its use hasn't seemed to have had any politically significant effects.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
I presume Canada has legal tender laws, which effectively create a Gresham's law situation of bad money crowding out the good in the process. There are likely other confounding reasons, as well. The private organizations are certainly large and centralized. They are this way largely because of legal climates that subsidize their inefficiencies and inhibit the onset of diseconomies of scale. It's not a proper interpretation to think of the government and the private sector as being opposed. After all, governments do want economic growth and competitiveness in international trade. As such, their actions will often be to help private corporations get larger through protectionist measures that might have good short-term effects (higher employment and larger industry) at the expense of the long-term effects when the propped up large industry inevitably starts to trample on the citizens it was supposed to help. Again, the solution is not to keep engaging in the vicious circle of reform, but settle it grassroots at last. Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism documents this process quite well during the U.S. Progressive era. Governments and corporations collude for shared ends more often than not. Corporations are creatures of the state, let's not forget.
- badsock 11y ago
  You are correct about the Gresham's law situation - TIL :) And to clarify, I wasn't strictly referring to government when I said "public organizations". I think any public institution is more or less constantly under threat from private interests, and when parts of a government are captured (as in your examples), I no longer consider that part of them a public institution. Though the fact that there's a range in the degree of capture, with the USA not doing well and a place like Switzerland doing well, I don't see it necessarily as an inevitably large property of government itself. What I find unconvincing in both anarchist and libertarian philosophies is their solutions for preventing the same sort of capture of their institutions - given that (at the very least) natural monopolies exist, and in both scenarios the institutions that are explicitly public aren't especially strong.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Your definition is non-standard. You seem to be conflating public with common. They're two different things.
    - nkurz 11y ago
      Could you explain the standard definition? Public vs Private is a common confusion between British and American English. Personally, I'm not sure where "Common" fits in. I found one link, but I'm not sure if that's the distinction you are making: http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/why-distinguish-common-goods-public-goods http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/why-distinguish-common-g...
- petra 11y ago
  >> legal climates that subsidize their inefficiencies and inhibit the onset of diseconomies of scale. Usually diseconomies of scale start at a very large level , far above the level of a single community. That's the case for most physical goods. Heck , you see it best in small countries like Israel - everything tends to form into monopolies or duopolies , exactly because of economies of scale. And when the state tries to think about building alternative companies, the sums involved are quite high - $500 million + . this is way beyond what a community could afford to aggregate even under optimal conditions.

by badsock 11y ago

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

I presume Canada has legal tender laws, which effectively create a Gresham's law situation of bad money crowding out the good in the process. There are likely other confounding reasons, as well. The private organizations are certainly large and centralized. They are this way largely because of legal climates that subsidize their inefficiencies and inhibit the onset of diseconomies of scale. It's not a proper interpretation to think of the government and the private sector as being opposed. After all, governments do want economic growth and competitiveness in international trade. As such, their actions will often be to help private corporations get larger through protectionist measures that might have good short-term effects (higher employment and larger industry) at the expense of the long-term effects when the propped up large industry inevitably starts to trample on the citizens it was supposed to help. Again, the solution is not to keep engaging in the vicious circle of reform, but settle it grassroots at last. Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism documents this process quite well during the U.S. Progressive era. Governments and corporations collude for shared ends more often than not. Corporations are creatures of the state, let's not forget.

badsock 11y ago
You are correct about the Gresham's law situation - TIL :) And to clarify, I wasn't strictly referring to government when I said "public organizations". I think any public institution is more or less constantly under threat from private interests, and when parts of a government are captured (as in your examples), I no longer consider that part of them a public institution. Though the fact that there's a range in the degree of capture, with the USA not doing well and a place like Switzerland doing well, I don't see it necessarily as an inevitably large property of government itself. What I find unconvincing in both anarchist and libertarian philosophies is their solutions for preventing the same sort of capture of their institutions - given that (at the very least) natural monopolies exist, and in both scenarios the institutions that are explicitly public aren't especially strong.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Your definition is non-standard. You seem to be conflating public with common. They're two different things.
  - nkurz 11y ago
    Could you explain the standard definition? Public vs Private is a common confusion between British and American English. Personally, I'm not sure where "Common" fits in. I found one link, but I'm not sure if that's the distinction you are making: http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/why-distinguish-common-goods-public-goods http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/why-distinguish-common-g...
petra 11y ago
>> legal climates that subsidize their inefficiencies and inhibit the onset of diseconomies of scale. Usually diseconomies of scale start at a very large level , far above the level of a single community. That's the case for most physical goods. Heck , you see it best in small countries like Israel - everything tends to form into monopolies or duopolies , exactly because of economies of scale. And when the state tries to think about building alternative companies, the sums involved are quite high - $500 million + . this is way beyond what a community could afford to aggregate even under optimal conditions.